Are You...Friends with Books? / Public Programmes 2017

Saturday, 23 September 2017

14:00 h Publisher and designer Jan Steinbach provides insight into the open Artists’ Publication catalogue and platform edcat.net and its vision to create a meaningful research tool, preserve metadata and make it accessible, as well as to connect artists, publishers, art historians, collectors, institutions and retailers on an online platform. He discusses why edcat.net is a cool tool for a lot of people in the art publishing sphere, show the fun of sorting books by detailed properties and how to buy artists’ books with Bitcoin. Presented by edcat.net.

15:00 h ‘Art Publishing and Distribution Strategies in Asia’, a panel discussion with Elaine W. Ho and Ming Lin (Display Distribute), Chris Moore (Ran Dian Magazine), and Yizhi Zhang (Doooogs) discussing both established and indepedent channels of print publishing and circulation as well as art book fairs and DIY strategies including online/digital/e-publishing, and self-publishing. Presented by Friends with Books.

16:00 h ‘On the Passion of Publishing and Collecting Art Books’, publisher Holger Liebs (Hatje Cantz), and art expert Albrecht Kastein, who collects art books obsessively, discuss the future of the art book medium. The art book is alive. More than ever, it is also an object to collect. Where lies its attraction and what are its limits? Presented by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Programme in German.

16:00 h Afternoon meeting of the Artists' Books Research Group, organised by Andrea Joosten and Anne Thurmann-Jajes, at Café Sarah Wiener. (Takes place until 18:00 h).

17:00 h Artist Jasmijn Visser in conversation with Caleb Waldorf (Triple Canopy) as a book launch for Conflict Atlas: Geopolitics and Contingencies on the Malvinas-Falklands Archipelago (Archive Books, 2017). Comprising texts, maps and archival materials, and starting from the case of the Falklands/Malvinas, it aims to create a field of tensions by the multiplication and stratification of geographical sites, historical times and subjective views. Presented by Archive Books.

18:00 h Artist Annika Larsson talks to Ewa Einhorn, Isabel Gatzke, Chloe Stead and Leon Lothschütz about her new book and film installation THE DISCOURSE OF THE DRINKERS, 2017 exploring the bar as a social and political space; followed by a performance by The Real Housewives of Neukölln, Berlin's preeminent trash drag musical cabaret comedy sketch show featuring Collapsella, Fanny, Cheryl, Marquis de Shade, Viagra Falls and Ida Entity. Presented by Friends with Books.

Sunday, September 24 2017

14:00 hMaría Inés Plaza Lazo and Will Furtado (editor, Sleek Magazine) discuss Ghost Pavilion (Reflektor M, 2017), a publication for phantoms, stories and fading topographies in and beyond Latin America that seeks to respond to the void left by the IILA (Instituto Latino Americano) at the Venice Biennale. Presented by Reflektor M.

15:00 h Artist Alex Turgeon reads from his new artist book Love poems for Ceres (Broken Dimanche Press, 2017), a compilation of works over the past three years touching on themes of gender and sexuality in relation to fantastical positions of witchcraft, interplanetary space, and cowboy and creation mythologies. Presented by Vice Versa.

16:00 h DHL (Drucken Heften Laden)’s fourth conversation, ‘Don't panic. Why e-publishing is just publishing with an e’, as part of its series ‘What is (in)dependent publishing today?’ with Nikola Richter (mikrotext) on her publishing concept and digital publishing in a cultural context, and why she began to print books despite being a digital publisher; with Simon Worthington (Mute & Hybrid Publishing Group) and Janine Sack (A Book Edition, electric eclectic). Presented by DHL.

17:00 h Artist Gitte Villesen discusses her artist book I stick my hands into the earth, and I think for a while (Archive Books, 2017) with a screening of her film Deeply immersed in the contents of a learning stone, 2016 (28 minutes), unfolding a narrative of the passing from one state of consciousness to another, in regard to feminist Sci-Fi literature, gender constructions and power dynamics in the crossover of different worlds. Presented by Archive Books.

18:00 hLoré Lixenberg, a voice artist/mezzo-soprano singer, performs ‘Twit Music’, 2015 (10 minutes), dedicated to Felix Fénéon, the work explores spooky questions such as ‘Can one make music with anything or nothing?’, ‘Is the compositional act before and after all a political act?’ and ‘Are you happy to be slaves?’. ‘Goodbye Music’, 2017 (1 minute), expounds on ‘How to say goodbye to a city after expulsion by gentrification’ and is dedicated to Lionel Richie. Both works are composed by Frédéric Acquaviva as part of the 120 Days of Musica cycle. Presented by La Plaque Tournante and Cru Magazine.